“Don’t you think,” Alison said, “that those who carry a notice over the head as well ought to have more?”
But Tommy Cathcart thought not.
That exhausted seven-and-sixpence.
Another thing that Alison and Tommy Cathcart did was to knock at the door of the cabmen’s shelter opposite De Vere Gardens, and ask if she might present a few puddings for Christmas Day. The man said she might, and that used up seven-and-sixpence—three puddings at half a crown, thirty threepences.
The other people to whom Alison sent Christmas presents with Mr. Thomson’s money were the children of the boatmen who had taken out her and her father and her cousins, Harry and Francis Frend, in the Isle of Wight last year. These boatmen were two brothers named Fagg—Jack and Willy Fagg—and their boat was the Seamew. Jack had four children and Willy six, and Alison used to go and see them now and then. After much consideration she sent four threepenny bits to each of these children, a shilling pipe, with real silver on it, to Jack and Willy, and a pound of two-shilling tea to Mrs. Jack and Mrs. Willy. That made sixteen shillings, or sixty-four threepenny bits.
Just then Alison had an unexpected piece of luck, for as she was passing a shop in Westbourne Grove she saw a window full of mittens at threepence a pair, sale price. Now, mittens are just the thing for cabmen in winter—cabmen and crossing-sweepers and errand-boys. So Alison bought thirty pairs, or seven-and-sixpence worth, and she gave a pair to each of the boys that called regularly—the butcher’s boy, and the baker’s boy, and the grocer’s boy, and a pair to the milkman, and a pair to the crossing-sweeper, and the rest were put in the hall for cabmen who brought her father home or took him out.
And then, just as they were getting rather in despair, one afternoon Tommy Cathcart came home with a brilliant idea.
“Smith,” he said, “is the commonest name in England. In every workhouse in England,” he said, “there must be one Smith at least. Why not,” he said, “get, say, sixty picture postcards and send them addressed to Mrs. Smith or Mr. Smith, or plain Smith, to sixty workhouses? We can get,” he said, “the names from ‘Bradshaw.’ A person in a workhouse will be awfully excited to get a Christmas card, and if,” he said, “there happens to be no Smith, some one else will have it.”
Alison liked the idea very much, and so they went off to a shop in the Strand absolutely full of picture postcards and bought sixty at a penny each. They had some little difficulty in choosing, because Tommy Cathcart wanted a certain number to be photographs of Pauline Chase and other pretty people, but Alison said that views of London would be better, since most persons knew London, and the card would remind them of old times. As it was, so to speak, her money, Alison got her own way. Then they bought sixty halfpenny stamps, and returned home to find the towns in “Bradshaw” and send them off. That all came to seven-and-six, or thirty threepenny bits.
Then Alison had a very brilliant inspiration—to give Jimmie a beautiful silver collar all for himself, with the words “In memory of James Thomson” on it, as a Christmas present. Dogs have so few presents, and Jimmie really was very good, except when he lost his head in the Gardens, which indeed, to be truthful, he always did. So he had his collar on Christmas morning, and it cost exactly twelve-and-six altogether, or fifty threepenny bits.